The present invention relates to trauma treatment and collection and preservation of information concerning trauma treatment, and particularly to recordkeeping regarding initial field treatment of injuries such as military field casualties or civilian mass casualties.
Transfer of casualties from a prehospital setting, particularly on a battlefield or resulting from a civilian tragedy such as a large highway collision or train wreck, to a more capable and comprehensive care center is often chaotic. It is important that information about field treatments performed by first responders be recorded, so that the emergency physicians receiving these patients at another site can effectively conduct triage and treat the patients. Currently the U.S. military services use a combat casualty card such as the one illustrated in FIGS. 1 and 2 of the drawings to record this information.
Such a combat casualty card is typically made of paper, laminated with plastic, and is attached to the patient via a lanyard composed of string, wire, rubber band, or the like. The first responder will fill out the information at the location where first aid is provided, and the patient will be transported to the site where the next level of care is available.
Unfortunately, especially in a battlefield, only a low percentage of casualties that arrive where the next level of care is available have these casualty/information cards still attached. This is for a variety of reasons. If the card is tied to clothes, the clothes may have be removed and discarded before the emergency physician or surgeon can see the patient. Or, the card might fall off or be ripped off the clothes at some point. Likewise, attachment of the card's string or other lanyard to the patient is not robust, and the cards may simply be lost in transit. Additionally, a card may not have been filled out in the first place, because of the chaos where a casualty occurred, or simply because of inconvenience, or a shortage of available casualty information cards. Attachment of a card to the patient may also be difficult due to the loss of limbs or appendages via traumatic amputation.
What is desired, then, is an improved casualty recording device that is not likely to become separated from an injured person before arrival at a site where additional medical care is available, so that valuable information recorded on the device can be used there to improve the efficiency of care given to a patient.